1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to video decoding techniques. In particular, the invention relates to systems and methods of concealing errors in images of a corrupted video bitstream.
2. Description of the Related Art
A variety of digital video compression techniques have arisen to transmit or to store a video signal with a lower bandwidth or with less storage space. Such video compression techniques include international standards, such as H.261, H.263, H.263+, H.263++, H.26L, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and MPEG-7. These compression techniques achieve relatively high compression ratios by discrete cosine transform (DCT) techniques and motion compensation (MC) techniques, among others. Such video compression techniques permit video bitstreams to be efficiently carried across a variety of digital networks, such as wireless cellular telephony networks, computer networks, cable networks, via satellite, and the like.
Unfortunately for users, the various mediums used to carry or transmit digital video signals do not always work perfectly, and the transmitted data can be corrupted or otherwise interrupted. Such corruption can include errors, dropouts, and delays. Corruption occurs with relative frequency in some transmission mediums, such as in wireless channels and in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks. For example, data transmission in a wireless channel can be corrupted by environmental noise, multipath, and shadowing. In another example, data transmission in an ATM network can be corrupted by network congestion and buffer overflow.
Corruption in a data stream or bitstream that is carrying video can cause disruptions to the displayed video. Even the loss of one bit of data can result in a loss of synchronization with the bitstream, which results in the unavailability of subsequent bits until a synchronization codeword is received. These errors in transmission can cause frames to be missed, blocks within a frame to be missed, and the like. One drawback to a relatively highly compressed data stream is an increased susceptibility to corruption in the transmission of the data stream carrying the video signal.
Those in the art have sought to develop techniques to mitigate against the corruption of data in the bitstream. For example, error concealment techniques can be used in an attempt to hide errors in missing or corrupted blocks. However, conventional error concealment techniques can be relatively crude and unsophisticated.
In another example, forward error correction (FEC) techniques are used to recover corrupted bits, and thus reconstruct data in the event of corruption. However, FEC techniques disadvantageously introduce redundant data, which increases the bandwidth of the bitstream for the video or decreases the amount of effective bandwidth remaining for the video. Also, FEC techniques are computationally complex to implement. In addition, conventional FEC techniques are not compatible with the international standards, such as H.261, H.263, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4, but instead, have to be implemented at a higher, “systems” level.